the miraculous oil that “distils from the coffer in which her relics are enclosed in her church of Eichstadt.” Cures are wrought by this oil to-day. We happen to know personally of one—the instant and final cure of a case of S. Vitus’ dance by a drop of the oil received on the patient’s tongue, after a novena and communion in the saint’s honor.
The “Journey of S. Willibald to the Holy Land,” which forms the second half of the little volume, was written at Heidenheim about the year 760. “It is interesting,” says F. Meyrick, “as confirming, by the testimony of an eye-witness a thousand years since, the Catholic traditions of some disputed localities, and as a specimen of a nun’s composition in the VIIIth century.”
[The Question of Anglican Ordinations Discussed.] By E. E. Estcourt, M.A., F.S.A., Canon of S. Chad’s Cathedral, Birmingham. With an Appendix of Original Documents and Fac-similes. London: Burns & Oates. 1873. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)
A controversial work written in a calm and mild tone is sure to claim attention and wise confidence, especially if that work deals with a difficult question, and one involved in much obscurity and uncertainty. Such is the style of the work before us, and such is the character of the question the Rev. Canon Estcourt treats—Anglican Ordinations.
This is truly a masterly work, and the author exhibits throughout that modesty which is the mark of a true scholar. But he does not condescend to his antagonist; he is fully aware that he is at warfare, but at warfare pro causa veritatis. He is a brave warrior, and wields a heavy weapon; he studies his foe well before he strikes, but, when he strikes, he strikes in a vital part.
We do not mean to say that he has finished the much-discussed question of Anglican ordinations, or that Anglicans will hereafter have nothing to say. They will always have something to say so long as the Establishment lasts. But we believe there are a large number of Anglicans who are serious and in earnest, and who conscientiously believe they have a priesthood, and it is among them we hope to see this book produce some practical result.
The present work starts out in the introduction with a “statement of the question” it is about to treat of, in which the author says he does not claim to bring forth much in the way of new facts or new principles, but aims rather at a more careful application of principles already laid down, and to show the real influence of the facts alleged by Anglicans (as, for instance, the consecration of Parker), even if true. It then states the Catholic doctrine on the question of holy orders, and finally lays down the principles of evidence to be followed in the investigation of historical facts.
The author commences with the “Origin of the Controversy,” in which, after showing how the seeds of heresy were first planted by Wyckliffe, and spread by the Lollards, and that the heresies on the Continent and in England were all one and the same growth—which Anglicans have so strenuously tried to deny—he exhibits the manner in which the Anglican rite was compiled, and shows that the form of ordination in the Edwardine ordinal was not primitive, but a compilation from the ritual of the Roman Church of the middle ages, there being nothing in it earlier than the IXth century, and most from the XIIIth and XIVth.
He then treats of the validity of the orders given in the new form, as tested by Queen Mary’s reign and the acts of Cardinal Pole, and shows by a number of cases, and a careful analysis of the different classes the Cardinal Legate had to deal with, that both “the Papal brief and the cardinal’s acts furnish the clearest possible evidence that the Holy See regarded the Edwardine ordinations as utterly worthless” (p. 40), and therefore that the Anglican claim of Catholics admitting these ordinations as valid is a false one.
The second, third, and fourth chapters are devoted to the “History of the Controversy.”